The term “assassination” is reserved for the murder of a prominent person for political reasons. Certainly, the murder of Charlie Kirk was the most recent assassination. People’s response has been very emotional, and we are tempted to hate. People are tempted to hate the assassin, those who don’t hold our beliefs, those we label as “other” than us, or our opponents. But rather we should do as Ericka Kirk has done, that is she forgave the man accused of killing her husband. “I forgive him because it is what Christ did and what Charlie would do.” “The answer to hate is not hate,” she said at his memorial service in Arizona.

As for Charlie Kirk let us remember the words of Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother Robert F. Kennedy who had been assassinated three days before: “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, but be remembered simply as a good man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

Let not death tempt or lead us to hate. For death (hate), thou shalt die.

TOM LaCROSS,

Alpena